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The crimson magic circle shone intensely on the concrete floor of the abandoned factory, illuminating the darkness of the southern district. From it emerged four figures, ready for combat.
Rias Gremory, her unmistakable red hair waving with demonic energy, took a step forward. Beside her, Akeno Himejima prepared small bolts of lightning between her fingers, while Kiba Yuto unsheathed a demonic sword and little Koneko Toujou clenched her fists, ready to tear renegade flesh apart.
But there was nothing to hunt.
Rias stopped dead, her blue eyes widening at the scene before them. Her instincts screamed at her to stay alert, but the silence inside the immense factory was sepulchral.
"We're late..." Rias murmured, letting her crimson aura slowly fade. "Again."
"You didn't just arrive late, Rias. You arrived at the scene of a massacre."
From the shadows of a metal walkway, a second magic circle, this one a neat blue bearing the emblem of House Sitri, faded away. Sona Sitri, the Student Council President, walked down the rusty stairs toward them, adjusting her glasses. Behind her came her faithful vice president, Tsubaki Shinra.
"Sona." Rias frowned, crossing her arms. "Was it you? Did your peerage take care of the rogue devil we detected half an hour ago?"
Sona shook her head, her expression more serious and analytical than usual.
"We arrived barely five minutes before you. And I assure you, whatever did this does not belong to my peerage. Nor to any other I know. See for yourself."
Kiba and Koneko moved forward to inspect the area, while Rias and Akeno approached the epicenter of the conflict. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the scale of the destruction left them breathless.
It had not been a simple fight. It had been a one-sided annihilation.
Koneko crouched beside an immense crater in the concrete floor. Her golden eyes scanned the debris.
"Buchou... the ground wasn't destroyed by magic. It was pure brute force. Something struck the concrete with enough force to raise pillars of solid stone. There are footprints."
Rias approached and looked where the small exorcist of superhuman strength was pointing. In the dust, there was a gigantic footprint with three reptilian claws, the footprints of Tery, the Tyranitar. It was so large and deep that it chilled the blood.
A few meters away, Kiba examined one of the factory's structural steel support beams.
"President, Rias-senpai... look at this."
The blond knight caressed the edge of the severed beam.
"The metal isn't torn or bent. It's cut cleanly, in a single slash. Whoever did this possesses a sword or bladed weapon with a density and cutting power that defies logic. Not even my demonic swords could cut through a steel beam this thick so cleanly without leaving burrs."
"And that's not all." Akeno, who normally maintained a sadistic or playful smile, was unusually serious. She stood before a large black stain on the ground that still emitted suffocating heat. "The renegade was burned. But this isn't ordinary demonic fire. The temperatures required to melt the asphalt and steel around it like this... far exceed the flames of House Bael or House Phenex. It is absolutely primitive heat."
Rias felt a chill run down her back. She looked at Sona.
"Footprints of titans, blades that cut steel like butter, and fire superior to that of the Phoenixes. Sona... what kind of monster is hunting in our city?"
"That is the real problem, Rias." Sona adjusted her glasses, which reflected the faint moonlight. "Tsubaki and I tried to trace the magical residue. There is nothing."
"Nothing?" Rias asked, incredulous. "Half a factory was just destroyed!"
"Zero," Sona confirmed firmly. "There is no trace of demonic energy. No angelic light, nor the shadowy signature of the Fallen. It is as if the attacker were a black hole of mana. Besides..."
Tsubaki stepped forward, holding a small notebook.
"Outside the factory, we found a human. An office worker. He was unharmed and asleep. When President Sona tried to review his memories to see what he had witnessed... we discovered that his short-term memory had been erased."
"Mental alteration magic?" Akeno asked, surprised.
Sona nodded, her face darkening with frustration.
"And at a terrifyingly high level. It was a surgical erasure, clean, smooth, without leaving brain damage. A telepathic technique so refined that it makes our best specialists look like children playing with clay."
Silence fell once again over the high-class devils of Kuoh Academy. The implications were terrifying.
"This is the fourth renegade to disappear this week," Rias murmured, clenching her fists. "Someone, or a group of 'someones,' is cleaning our city. We don't know if they are allies, disguised Church hunters, or an external faction of monsters simply claiming territory."
Kiba sheathed his sword, looking at the strange claw marks on the wall left by the Garchomp.
"If they have this level of power and move without being detected... if they wanted to attack us, we probably wouldn't see it coming until it was too late."
Sona turned toward her childhood friend and rival.
"Rias, starting tomorrow, I want our peerages to increase patrols. But under no circumstances must they initiate hostilities if they encounter whoever is responsible for this. If this 'Ghost' can massacre renegades and melt steel in seconds without leaving a magical trace, a direct confrontation could be suicidal."
Rias nodded slowly, her demonic pride wounded, but her common sense as a leader prevailing.
"Agreed. We'll keep our eyes open. If this mysterious force makes one wrong move in our academy or attacks our servants, we will respond. But until then... Kuoh has a new guardian in the shadows, and I don't like it one bit."
While the heiresses of the Gremory and Sitri clans left the factory, sunk in paranoia and theorizing about elite Vatican squads or ancient dragons in disguise, they ignored the comedic truth.
The feared, lethal, and undetectable "Ghost" that had them terrified was, at that precise moment, in his bed a couple of kilometers away, snoring peacefully and drooling on his pillow while dreaming that Goku was teaching him how to make fried rice, unaware of the political crisis his pets had just caused in the Underworld.
...
Evening had fallen over Kuoh City, dyeing the sky a deep orange.
Kaiju was leaning against a lamppost, arms crossed and wearing an expression of infinite existential exhaustion. A few meters away from him, coming out of a dubious shop hidden in an alley, were Issei, Matsuda, and Motohama. The three carried heavy paper bags full of eroge manga, adult magazines, and dating games, smiling as if they had plundered a pirate's treasure.
"This is the loot of the month, boys!" Issei proclaimed, raising a magazine toward the sky. "The illustration in this special edition is a masterpiece!"
"You three are beyond salvation," Kaiju sighed, pushing himself off the post. "If you channeled all that energy and dedication into learning martial arts, you would have already conquered the planet."
"You don't understand the romance of youth, Kaiju!" Motohama scolded him, adjusting his glasses proudly.
"Whatever. I'll see you tomorrow in class. Try not to get arrested on the way home," Kaiju said goodbye, lazily waving his hand as he took a different path.
After separating from the idiots, silence surrounded him. He walked through the shopping district until the sweet, warm aroma of freshly baked bread caught his attention. It came from a small, traditional corner bakery.
Kaiju entered without thinking much. Among the display cases full of cakes and buns, his eyes stopped on a specific tray: Kinako Bread, special edition with strawberry filling.
He bought one.
He left the shop when night had already completely taken over the city. Walking under the pale light of the streetlamps, Kaiju unwrapped the bread and took a small bite. The soft texture of the dough, the unmistakable toasted flavor of sweet soybean flour, and the acidic, refreshing touch of strawberry jam flooded his palate.
It was automatic. A soft, sincere, deeply nostalgic smile appeared on his face.
"She would love this..." Kaiju thought, chewing slowly. He could imagine it perfectly: Tohka opening her eyes wide, with a blush on her cheeks, snatching the bag from his hands to devour ten of those breads in the blink of an eye, staining the corner of her lips with Kinako powder.
That lonely memory filled him with overwhelming sadness, but the smile did not leave his face. It was a smile that treasured the memory of his former beloved, a silent promise that one day, he would bring her back.
Suddenly, the internal radar of his spirit emitted a shrill alarm.
The sweet strawberry flavor mixed in the air with a stench of rot and rust. A disgusting, chaotic, viscous energy had locked onto him from the shadows of a nearby rooftop. It was another "Renegade." A devil who had probably seen him separate from the group and considered him a lone human, easy and juicy prey.
Kaiju took another bite of his Kinako bread. His nostalgic smile did not disappear, but his only visible eye became cold as ice.
He did not quicken his pace. He did not look up. He simply adjusted his route, moving away from the main streets to enter the construction zone of a future shopping mall, a place surrounded by metal walls and heavy machinery, completely empty at that hour of the night.
Upon reaching the center of the dirt clearing, Kaiju stopped. He finished the last bite of his bread, cleaned his hands by shaking off the Kinako powder, and slowly turned around.
"You can come out now. I know you're hungry," Kaiju said, his voice sounding mortally bored.
A viscous sound came from the steel beams above him. An enormous mass of mutated flesh, with four long and disproportionate arms and a head that was only a gigantic mouth full of twisted fangs, landed heavily, raising a cloud of dust.
"Kikiki... arrogant human..." the monster drooled, its dark aura emanating like toxic smoke. "Your flesh... your energy... I'm going to swallow them."
Kaiju looked it up and down. Unlike previous nights, he did not bring his hand to his pocket. The Alpha Squad deserved to rest, and honestly, this creature made him so lazy that it did not deserve the honor of being incinerated by Charizard or cut down by Garchomp.
"I was remembering something beautiful," Kaiju murmured, crossing his arms. "I had a smile on my face. And your disgusting presence just ruined the mood."
"SHUT UP AND DIE!" the rogue devil roared, lunging forward with its four arms extended to tear the boy apart.
Kaiju let out a long sigh. He did not use Transmutation. He did not activate the Purple color. He simply lowered his center of gravity, spread his legs, and drew his right fist back to waist level.
The boredom on his face was replaced by the absolute concentration of a martial artist.
The Ki that erupted from his body was not the white of his base state, nor the sapphire of the Kamehameha, nor the furious red of the Kaio-ken. It was a pure golden radiance, bright and blinding, illuminating the entire construction zone as if the sun had suddenly risen in the middle of the night.
The golden energy swirled around his right arm, compressing and spinning frantically until it took the shape of scales, claws, and whiskers made of pure light.
The monster, barely two meters away from him, felt primitive terror paralyze its cells, but it was already too late to stop its charge.
"Disappear," Kaiju sentenced.
He threw his fist forward with enough force to make the concrete beneath his boots explode.
"DRAGON FIST!"
GROOOAAARRR!
A deafening roar that did not come from a human throat, but from life energy itself, shook the foundations of the city. A gigantic and majestic eastern dragon of solid golden light shot out from Kaiju's fist.
The golden dragon did not merely strike the rogue devil; it pierced through it cleanly, devouring it in a vortex of crushing Ki. The monstrous beast was disintegrated at the subatomic level on the spot. But the attack did not stop there. The dragon of light continued its ascent, piercing the night sky and dispersing the clouds within a five-kilometer radius before bursting into a rain of golden sparks that fell over Kuoh like shooting stars.
The roar slowly faded, leaving only the sound of the young man's calm breathing.
Kaiju lowered his arm, the golden light completely vanishing from his skin. He looked at the dirt ground where absolutely nothing remained of the monster, not even ashes.
"You weren't even a good warm-up," he murmured, slipping his hands into the pockets of his uniform. "I need to get more of that strawberry bread tomorrow."
Without looking back, he brought two fingers to his forehead and, with a soft POP, disappeared from the construction zone, leaving the city's demonic factions with an even greater and more terrifying mystery: a golden dragon of pure light that had just torn through Kuoh's skies.
...
Kuoh's night sky should not have shone that way.
In the Student Council office, Sona Sitri dropped her fountain pen onto a stack of reports. Tsubaki Shinra, who was organizing some files, froze while staring out the large window. For an instant, the glass vibrated at such a high frequency that it threatened to shatter, while a golden light, brighter than the midday sun, bathed the entire room.
It was not an ordinary magical explosion. There was no characteristic sulfur smell of devils, nor the icy cold of the Fallen, nor the sacred pressure of angels.
It was... a roar. A sound heard not with the ears, but with the soul.
"Tsubaki..." Sona's voice was barely a whisper charged with unprecedented tension. "Tell me I'm not the only one who felt that physical pressure."
"President... my body refused to move for three seconds," Tsubaki replied, adjusting her glasses with trembling hands. "That energy... wasn't mana. It was something dense, warm, and... absurdly pure."
Sona leapt to her feet, rounding her desk. "Call Rias. Now."
...
Ten minutes later, in the clearing of a construction zone on the outskirts, the two peerages gathered beneath the rain of golden sparks that still fell from the sky, fading before touching the ground.
Rias Gremory was pale. Beside her, Akeno Himejima no longer smiled; her eyes scanned the firmament with a mixture of fascination and dread. Kiba Yuto kept his hand on the hilt of his sword, though his instincts screamed that there was no enemy to fight. Koneko Toujou was on her knees, touching the dirt ground where the rogue devil had been moments earlier.
"There's nothing left," Koneko said, her usually flat voice tinged with wonder. "Buchou... the renegade's trace has been erased. It wasn't incinerated... it was disintegrated."
Sona and Tsubaki appeared in a blue magic circle, joining the group.
"Rias," Sona called, getting straight to the point. "Did you see the shape?"
"A dragon," Rias replied, looking toward the point where the clouds had completely dispersed within a five-kilometer radius. "An eastern dragon of golden light. It pierced the sky as if space itself were paper."
"My sensors detected no trace of demonic energy," Sona reported, crossing her arms while her analytical mind worked at full speed. "But the output... Rias, that technique surpasses the level of an Ultimate-Class Devil. If that had struck the academy, not even the ground would remain."
Kiba stepped forward, pointing at the ground. "Look at this. There are no magical explosion craters. There are only two very deep human boot prints. Whoever launched that attack did it from the ground, with their own fists."
"A physical attack capable of manifesting an energy dragon of that caliber?" Akeno let out a nervous laugh. "That sounds like the legends of ancient Chinese martial arts masters or gods of war. But here... in Kuoh..."
"This is the same 'Ghost' who has been eliminating the renegades," Sona concluded, looking at her red-haired friend. "But until now, it had been discreet. Tonight's incident... was a message. Or an absolute lack of interest in hiding."
Rias clenched her fists. She felt control over her city slipping through her fingers. First a silent killer, and now a being capable of summoning golden dragons that split the sky.
"Koneko, Kiba... intensify the search," Rias ordered firmly. "I don't want you to confront him. I only want a face. A name. I need to know whether this 'Dragon God' is someone who simply hates renegades or whether he is a threat waiting for his turn to hunt us."
"And if he's human?" Koneko suddenly asked, looking at the boot prints.
Sona and Rias looked at each other. The idea was absurd. A human with the power of a Dragon God living in a modern Japanese city was something that defied the entire hierarchy of the three factions.
"If he is human," Sona said coldly, "then the entire supernatural world is in trouble. Because it means we have overlooked the most dangerous creature on the planet while we were having tea."
While the devils of Kuoh debated the end times and possible divine wars, the radar of their senses remained incapable of detecting the "monster."
They were looking for a mystic warrior, a hidden dragon, or an envoy of Heaven. It would never occur to them to search for a teenager with a scar over his eye who, at that moment, was entering a 24-hour store to buy strawberry milk and mentally complain that tomorrow's history exam was going to be "really hard."